Sprint Defeats Class Certification Motion
9/14/2007
New York, NY - On August 27, 2007, Sprint Corporation and one of its affiliates won a decision in the Supreme Court of New York, Kings County on a proposed motion to certify a class action in a lawsuit against it. As a result, the case has been referred to the Civil Court due to the limited amount in controversy. Anderson Kill represented Sprint in this action.
The case, Naftulin v. Sprint Corp. and Sprint Spectrum, L.P., Index No. 14230/06, was brought by a consumer who purchased Sprint wireless products and services based on an erroneous advertisement. Allegedly, the New York consumer bought service based upon a September 2001 circular advertisement - an ad that was not intended to run in New York, but rather only in certain other test markets, and which inadvertently had been run by a national chain store. Plaintiff then discovered that her wireless bill did not reflect the special offer she had purported to purchase, and contacted Sprint.
Despite Sprint's immediate recognition and retraction of the error, and its numerous offers of compensation to the customer, and despite plaintiff's acceptance of some (but not all) of these offers, she nonetheless elected to bring suit on behalf of herself and the purportedly many other similarly situated consumers around the country who allegedly had been misled into purchasing Sprint service.
After extensive briefing and oral argument, the New York Supreme Court, Kings County found that despite plaintiff's contention that there were potentially thousands of possible class members, there were, in fact, only 26 individuals who had complained that they had purchased Sprint service in error based on the circular that mistakenly ran outside of the test markets. Of these 26 potential class members, many had already accepted Sprint's offers of compensation or redress for the confusion. Additionally, the mistaken circular only ran for two business days before Sprint withdrew it.
Because many of the potential class members had already had their grievances redressed by Sprint, and, additionally, because each potential class member had been subject to different representations, terms and conditions depending on where they purchased their service, the Supreme Court found that no common questions of fact or law existed, and the case was remanded to Civil Court to proceed on an individual basis.
About Anderson Kill:
Anderson Kill & Olick, P.C. was founded in 1969 on the principles of integrity, excellence in the practice of law, and straightforward solutions to complex legal issues. Anderson Kill practices in the areas of Bankruptcy & Restructuring, Corporate & Commercial Litigation, Corporate & Securities, Employment & Labor Law, Insurance Recovery, Intellectual Property, Product Liability, Real Estate, Tax, and Trusts & Estates. The firm has offices in New York, Chicago, Greenwich, Newark, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
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